Recommendation network

December 4, 2004 12:58 PM

As illustrated by this recent Wired Magazine article, consumer-to-consumer recommendations on the Internet are certainly influencing consumer demand. Goodblock attempts to gather casual friend-to-friend recommendations--from a good baby-friendly Thai restaurant in town to a doggy day care you trust--and collect them in a directory much as del.icio.us collects bookmark recommendations for your friends to peruse. For now, goodblock is in beta and is accessible only by friend invitation and, similar to the friendster model, you can only see your own directory and those of your listed friends.
posted by lowkey (20 comments total)

Theoretically, this cuts out the task of evaluating a stranger's product or service review for compatibility with your own tastes, separating goodblock from something like epinions. You can judge your friends' opinions of things against what you already know about their tastes. Listings in goodblock include star ratings and descriptions as well as phone numbers and zip codes. Although you can certainly add websites to your directory the main emphasis seems to be on local retailers and service providers.
posted by lowkey at 12:59 PM on December 4, 2004

I work for a similiar site, InsiderPages. Our site's a bit more open than GoodBlock, so come in and have a look. (It's a beta in LA only. Let us know how we're doing!)

It's pretty wild how many different players there are here already. A lot of the Internet giants are also inching their way in.
posted by maschnitz at 1:04 PM on December 4, 2004

I haven't seen anything except the login page for GoodBlock, and I already don't trust the site because the page doesn't display properly in Mac Firefox.

Also, what's the point of posting a link to a site that is inaccessible to everyone except for people that already know about it?

GoodLuck, GoodBlock.
posted by bryce at 1:41 PM on December 4, 2004

On the surface it seems like a great idea. In fact it probably is a great idea for many people.

When I thought about what my friends would contribute to their lists I realized it wouldn't do me any good at all. Partly because I already do a lot of research on the products I buy. Also, our budgets interests vary greatly.
posted by Chuckles at 1:45 PM on December 4, 2004

That's an interesting description...

But how amateurish can you get? I'm really jaded about what people are trying to call "beta".

Here's a wikipedia link with a description of what beta means.

Evidently in this case it means "we are so far from having a finished product that we have no index page, haven't bothered to test the site on different browsers (in my case the login page looks like crap in firefox), and don't exist anywhere on google yet." or maybe it means "me and my roommate had a good idea but I only figured out how to write a login page so far"

Just because you barfed up some .jsp's and invited your relatives doesn't mean you are in beta.
posted by sucka_mc at 1:49 PM on December 4, 2004

Chuckles, I find there's is a set of stuff I don't need anyone's opinions on (clothes, theaters, Target), and another set of stuff where it's kinda interesting to spout off and read other spout off (restaurants, mainly, also stuff like Fry's). But there are things local recommendations are perfect for: mechanics, plumbers, personal care like barbers -- and babysitters and spas and hairstylists, I suppose -- and any new hobbies like running stores or dance halls. (Found a kick-ass mechanic myself.)

Personally, if I don't have a clue about something, or I could get massively screwed, these local recommendations really come in handy.

We think it's really good for women, especially mothers. We get a lot of reviews that are like "this guy hit on me then charged me a 150% of what he should of", scary stuff like that.
posted by maschnitz at 1:59 PM on December 4, 2004

What about myspace ?
posted by asbates2 at 2:06 PM on December 4, 2004

I just hope no consumer, through one of these sites, accidentally utters a word about whether the management of a company supports one political party or another. Apparently, such knowledge is upsetting to quite a few people.
posted by dreish at 2:28 PM on December 4, 2004

Also, what's the point of posting a link to a site that is inaccessible to everyone except for people that already know about it?

So we can discuss the peer recommendation model and so others can post similar sites that might be better or serve similar but different needs.
posted by lowkey at 2:28 PM on December 4, 2004

The thing that always makes me scratch my head when I hear about services like this is if you are collecting the opinions of your friends about things, why do it online? Alternatively, if you are just taking the opinions of strangers then what is the need for a closed system?
posted by bangalla at 2:37 PM on December 4, 2004

bangalla, you can choose to publish it to the entire site, on ours. Then you can see what everyone else said about everything.

(I'm betting GoodBlock is the same as InsiderPages.com, once you're in. Otherwise, you're right, what would be the point?)
posted by maschnitz at 2:46 PM on December 4, 2004

I'll stick by AskMe, thanks.
posted by Vidiot at 2:49 PM on December 4, 2004

We think it's really good for women, especially mothers.

Exactly why I'm interested. I'm a new mom and previously I had a large frame of reference in which to navigate as a consumer. Now I basically have to start from scratch with baby goods and services. Since I want better merchandise than the local huge baby store can give me, I need to do a lot of research. A couple of my friends are in the same situation, it would be nice to have a central exchange for all of our combined experiences. Plus baby needs change pretty quickly so the faster we can share this information, the better. And it's easier to access the Internet for me once in a while than it is to phone a friend who has a baby or to meet her somewhere. I do phone and meet, I'm talking about frequency and convenience for the specific purpose of comparing recommendations with complete information like addresses and phone numbers. Using a site where the opinions come largely from strangers just adds another level of research for me in evaluating how well those opinions match my own preferences.
posted by lowkey at 2:58 PM on December 4, 2004

This is all so rarefied it's ridiculous. So, I have to have a friend whose opinion I value who lives in the same area as me who's happy with her pumber who submits her views on-line on the same site as me to get any value out of this service? Give me a break...
posted by runkelfinker at 4:02 PM on December 4, 2004

Not being able to look past the first page, this sounds like an amazing idea because of what I hope it'd contain: so-and-so went to that Hungarian restaurant (or Georgian, or the Laotian under the table place) down by the river where all the abandoned factories are, and aside of getting chased by a dog in the junkyard across the street, she had the best bowtie noodles with jam and toasted poppyseeds she'd ever had, and drank some plum slivovitz and got so toasted she lost $3 to the owner's 12 year old daughter in a high-stakes game of gin rummy. Or the radiator shop built into the train trestle where you have to drive the wrong way down that one way street where all the stoplights are shot out...

I'm sure it isn't that fantastic, but my imagination runs along the lines of Ben Katchor comics..
posted by soviet sleepover at 8:55 PM on December 4, 2004

So this is sort of like Angie's List?
posted by alms at 9:02 PM on December 4, 2004

This seems like as good a place as any to point out that Netflix is beta testing a social-networking feature.

While I think the idea of something like Goodblock is certainly interesting, I kind of like the more "small pieces loosely joined" method that seems to be emerging. I've got Audioscrobbler for music recommendations, Netflix for movies, Amazon (kinda) for damn near everything else. This approach appeals to me because 1) it lets disparate services do what they're good at (movies, music, etc.) and 2) it's distributed, so there's not some centralized Big Brother keeping a watch over everything. Yet.

Of course, the one thing I really like about the Goodblock idea is that it seems to map non-digital data to a recommendation engine. Yeah, that's super dorky, but there's only so much of my life that I live in my computer. So, while Audioscrobbler is great for keeping an eye on my mp3 collection, it sure would be nice to have somewhere to go for a great Hungarian restaurant recommendation...
posted by jimray at 9:36 PM on December 4, 2004

Sigh ... I was affiliated with a startup late 1999 through early 2001 which was in this social commerce space. We had visionary initial investors, but once the bubble worked, nobody else could see the long-term potential.

Run the clock foward 3+ years and it's amazing how similar some of these sites are in look and feel (and mechanics and business model) to our product.

I wonder how many cool ideas which died in 2000-01 are being quietly (or not so quietly) reborn. I also wonder whether the founders/investors/creditors of SixDegrees are getting any royalties out of LinkedIn...
posted by MattD at 11:38 AM on December 5, 2004

Angie's List in Tampa has had some bad press recently.

The reputation of the Tampa Bay chapter of Angie's List is under attack. Some former employees say advertisers got preferential treatment, a charge the owner denies. [More, RealPlayer required]

posted by piskycritter at 8:07 PM on December 5, 2004

lowkey: we really want feedback from new users, particularly from mothers. You seemed intrigued by the entire idea. Maybe you've got some ideas of your own. Or maybe you want to talk about this some more.

If you or anyone else is interested, create a quickie new account on our site, skip through most of the registration, then send us an email through our "Contact Us" page. We'd love to hear from you.
posted by maschnitz at 11:25 AM on December 6, 2004